What Should You Do? Bone Loss Around Implants and Screw Loosening – GF014

Today we pick up where we left off on the 1st part of Group Function Episode 13 “Can I Probe This Implant?” In this episode I asked Dr Pav Khaira about bone loss around implants - what is normal and when should I worry? Another very interesting and controversial issue we tackled is how to manage implant screw loosening as a GDP? https://youtu.be/C1Y_AdDhLzU Check out this full episode on YouTube Need to Read it? Check out the Full Episode Transcript below! “If every single year you're losing one millimeter (of bone) that's obviously an issue and we need to intervene and do something,” Dr Pav Khaira In this episode we discussed: Normal bone loss for average implants 1:53Guidelines for GDPs managing loose implant screws 5:03Universal Implant Drivers? 10:45 If you liked this episode, be sure to check out the first part of this series Can I Probe This Implant? Click below for full episode transcript: Opening Snippet: Because screws become stressed and they become strained. That may be one of the reasons why it's come loose. And if you retighten a strange screw you can you can cause it to break, then you're in trouble because you may not be able to retrieve it from the implant head... Jaz' Introduction:Hello, Protruserati. I'm Jaz Gulati and welcome back to this second part of the group function. So we split it into two. On the first group function, if you haven't listened to it already, it was "Can I probe that implant?" Is it cool to probe around implants? Because there was a myth that you may scratch the implant? So is there any truth to that? Should we be concerned? That's all covered in part one. In this part two, we've got Dr. Pav Khaira, we're talking about What is the normal amount of bone loss around implant? So when I am reviewing patients who had implants placed elsewhere, potentially, and I take a peri-apical radiograph, it's been five years since they had the implant and my expecting bone loss. At what point do I get concerned? And what point should I refer? So we're gonna find that out. And another very interesting controversial issue is, how do you as a GDP manage a screw loosening? So if the implant crown is loose, is it cool for us to be going in and tightening it? What about if you don't have the right equipment? Or how to even identify which system it is. You have to stop every single driver there is? The very real world question there and I think Pav does great justice. So let's hear it from Pav, and I'll catch you in the outro. Main Interview:[Jaz] When you see a radiograph of an implant, let's say a peri-apical. And I don't know when this implant was on, I can ask the patient, the patient like a long time ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, they give me a vague answer. But anyway, am I expecting ever, is it acceptable to have threads exposed supracrestal, ie, all the threads are not in the bone, some of the threads are outside the bone, Is this acceptable? And be what amount of bone loss is normal? Because I understand that after you place an implant, after about a year, you expect to lose "some", you're probably gonna say yes, by do all this crazy voodoo magic that they don't lose any bone. But for the average implant, what is normal in terms of bone loss. [Pav]So historically, what's been considered acceptable is as a rule of thumb, bone loss down to the first thread, then about 0.2 millimeters per year, as you quite rightly said that these is, the modern techniques, the modern concepts, were really shouldn't be seeing anything at all. But you know, I see loads of patients where they come in to see me where they've had implants placed 20 years ago, okay? And I think the issue is in the absence, in the absence of any inflammatory responses, like what we've discussed about before, there's no bleeding, there's no suppuration, the implants been there 20 years, if you've got a 15-18 millimeter long implant, you've got three millimeters of thread exposed,